Best and Worst Housing Markets in August

How cities ranked based on five different measures

Median Days on the Market

This is a pretty straightforward one: It’s the same deal as with median list price, but it tells you how long a property has been listed rather than how much it’s selling for.

A market with lots of lingering houses could, of course, be down, while individual houses that struggle to be sold may be overpriced or less desirable.

And if houses are quickly hopping off the market, there’s usually a good reason for that, too.

Best: San Jose, Calif.

California, in this case, is still a good place to be. The median amount of time that houses were on the market in San Jose was less than a month — only 27 days — in August. The average for this measure was double that, while many markets moved significantly slower.

Worst: Detroit

The worst of those markets was, once again, good ol’ Detroit. In August, the average number was 128 days — another not-so-bright sign for the city. That comes to a median listing length of over four months, meaning half sat on the market even longer than that, and making Detroit the only city that broke into triple digits for the statistic.